The road toward the Phantom Desert was honest at first. Then it began to lie.

It was a small thing, the way the wind kept returning to him, as though it disliked being dismissed. A smaller thing, the way footprints appeared ahead and ended without reason. But John had been trained to distrust small things. In Kum, small things were often the beginning of machinery.

He drank as he walked. Not enough to dull his mind. Enough to insult his own nerves.

He did not admit to fear. He called it annoyance.

When he saw the encampment, it felt like the conclusion of a thought he had not chosen to begin.

Lanterns stood in careful pools of light. A wagon sat at the centre, unmarked. A dozen people gathered near it, too calm, too aligned. They were not frightened. They were relieved. That was what made John’s stomach turn.

At their centre stood a woman.

She spoke softly, yet her words carried as if the air itself preferred to hold them.

“Please,” she said, “there is no need to rush. We will arrive when we are ready.”

John stepped forward quickly, forcing the crowd to part. He stopped close enough to make courtesy impossible and stared at her with eyes wide and merciless.

He wanted her to flinch.

She did not.

“You are very tired,” she said, almost kindly. “And you are carrying noise inside you.”

John felt an immediate, irrational hatred for the accuracy of it.

He leaned closer. “And you are doing what, exactly? Gathering sheep?”

She looked at him as one looks at a storm, not frightened, only alert.

“We are resting,” she said. “You may rest, too.”

“I did not ask for rest,” John replied.

“No,” she answered. “You asked for interruption.”

It was the first time she had spoken to him as though she understood the shape of his defiance.

He hesitated, not because he was convinced, but because the situation refused to give him a simple enemy.

“I will stay,” he said at last, as if daring the world to punish him for it. “May I have a sleeping spot?”

The woman’s gaze flickered, the smallest fracture in her composure.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

Someone moved a blanket. Another shifted a lantern. They did it without being told. That unnerved John more than obedience ever had. It was not command. It was convergence.

“My name is Magnolia,” she said after a moment, as though the name had been waiting to be offered.

That night John slept among them, yet he did not sleep as they did. Their rest seemed too smooth, too complete, as if their minds had been polished into agreement. He woke early, with the stubborn need to prove he was not one of them.

He trained alone beyond the lantern-light.

Magic in small, precise shapes. Physical discipline in measured repetition. He did it quietly, which was his way of defying anyone who expected a performance.

When he returned, Magnolia stood by the wagon as if she had never left her post.

He did not bother with pleasantries.

“You said I would complicate things,” John said. “You praised me, then warned me. Explain.”

Magnolia did not pretend innocence.

“You complicate things because you stay without surrendering,” she said. “Most who come near do so because they want relief. You do not want relief.”

“What do I want, then?” John asked.

“You want friction,” Magnolia replied. “You want the world to resist you so you can prove you are real.”

John’s grip tightened on his staff. His hands were still warm from exertion.

“You speak as though you’ve already decided who I am,” he said.

“I speak as though I’ve watched many men pretend they were free,” Magnolia answered. “And then beg to be guided.”

John’s voice lowered. “Are you guiding them?”

Her eyes did not soften. “I reduce the burden of choice.”

He stared at her and felt, unpleasantly, that she was telling the truth.

“You narrow the world,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You are dangerous,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered again, and the honesty landed like a weight.

John felt the voice in his head stir, not with prophecy, but with that fierce moral irritation he could never quite tame.

If people wanted to be led, they would follow the first gentle hand that offered them relief.

He realised, with something like disgust, that he might do the same if he let himself.

So he left.

Not because Magnolia threatened him.

Because she did not have to.

Next Episode, Next Monday!